[Avodah] Cruetly to animals and shabbat

[garry]

On 8/8/2011 8:47 AM, Zev Sero wrote:
>> So we don't rescue non-Jewish lives on Shabbos?

> Not if we can avoid it without causing eivah.  That's absolutely clear
> in Shulchan Aruch.

Eivah is precisely the issue.

[Email #2. Clearly there was a reply from RZS in between,
but for some reason this is the order it showed up in the
queue.
-micha]

On 8/8/2011 3:49 PM, Zev Sero wrote:
>> Eivah is precisely the issue.

> Whose eivah?  The animals?  Are they going to start a pogrom against us?!
> Or are the goyim going to start killing Jews because we left an animal
> down a hole?!  In what country could that conceivably happen?

So eivah applies only to where the direct result is that we would be
killed? Issues like whether shechita would be forbidden and so forth
are not relevant?


[Email #3. -micha]

On 8/8/2011 4:20 PM, Zev Sero wrote:
> On 8/08/2011 7:15 PM, garry wrote:
>> So eivah applies only to where the direct result is that we would be
>> killed?  Issues like whether shechita would be forbidden and so forth
>> are not relevant?

> Of course they're not relevant.  How can you be mechalel shabbos for 
> them?
> And do you imagine that until 1800 the goyim were such lovely friends of
> ours, and we didn't have to worry about them not liking us?  And yet the
> gemara and every single rishon and achron is clear that one may not heal
> them on shabbos, because they will accept our excuse that we only break
> shabbos to heal those who keep shabbos.

Then what's the test for eivah?


[Email #4. Another reply to an RZSpost that never went to queue. -micha]

On 8/8/2011 9:50 PM, Zev Sero wrote:
>> Then what's the test for eivah?

> Who says there is a test?  You're reasoning from a very weak exception,
> as if it were a well-established halachic category.  But we *know* that
> at least until about 1800 eivah was *not* enough to allow breaking
> shabbos to heal goyim.  And we know things were not exactly friendly
> between us and the goyim during all that time.  But we relied on the
> fact that the goyim would accept our excuse that shabbos can only be
> broken for a shomer shabbos, and we didn't worry that they would be
> angry anyway.  That's a fact that you have to deal with.  The post-1800
> heter, and what changed, is obviously a lot less clear, but it's clearly
> an exception, not a rule, so you can't reason from it.

I'm not trying to reason from anything (yet), I'm simply trying to find
out what you see as the parameters of the post-1800 heter. Is it only
applicable to life-or-death situations?